Dramarama ding dong...

Sorry for the long pause but I have been busy being a grump. I am really good at it actually. In my own defense, there has been a few doses of drama that have kept me busy. OK, here come all the other excuses too: work, goddammit I'm teaching...in the studio with clay and online art 101...Im being a Dad and Husband, it aint too bad being around the house and my daughter has been going to theater camp 5 days a week...I gotta power-wash and re-stain my deck...somebody's gotta pull weeds from the garden...yeah, yeah, yeah. You know how it is, and I admit to knowing very well how it is sometimes. And right now, I just wanna go on a vacation.

But back to reality, if you remember from my last post, I alluded to the fact that there was some crappy ceramics happening in my life. This is true and it really put my motivation on the back burner. I made a couple dozen or more small pieces with this really dark body clay and it was bleeding through all my glazes. It is so full of iron, it also blisters the glaze. As of the other day, I re-bisqued all those pieces(after doing all the wax resist work) up to 04. Hopefully this will burn out more impurities and allow for a better glazed surface. In the mean time I found a recipe for a white crackle slip for bisque and applied it to 5-6 pieces.... I thought I would approach my failure to produce these dark body mid-range pieces from a different direction. I am swapping the laser transfer decal image for a paper stencil, Tahitian, floral motif. I will fire these guys to cone 5 and then later an 018 for something fancy. I will also glaze the remainder and keep my fingers crossed...I guess we will see...

In between everything else, I have also been making pieces for an upcoming wood fire with Nancy Smeltzer. It felt good to switch gears back to wood fire work. I'm not sure if it was more comfortable or what, but I'm enjoying making these mugs and pitchers and jugs. Im using a clay body from Standard Ceramics that Nancy suggested...#119...very sandy stuff but I like it. Here's a couple of high drama black and white pics of some of those pieces in the high drama ceramic studio there at IUP. Nancy is planning on firing the 20/21st...something like that, so I have plenty of time to make more work...this has got me thinking about firing the salt kiln here at the university's studio now too. I have seen a lot of good work come out of that kiln and I am teaching until August 5. Time to make, make, make.